


titanium

by Remy (iamremy)



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt!Ethan, Hurt/Comfort, Long-Distance Call, M/M, SPOILERS FOR ROGUE NATION
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4619727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamremy/pseuds/Remy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag to Rogue Nation. Ethan calls Will with a problem shortly after he goes rogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	titanium

**Author's Note:**

> SO I WATCHED IT TODAY AND I COULDN'T NOT, DO YOU HEAR ME? I COULDN'T NOT. This movie killed my writer's block, it was so _glorious_ and I want to inject it into my bloodstream.
> 
> Since I can't do that, I wrote fic.
> 
>  **DISCLAIMER** : the medical bullshit is exactly that - bullshit. I tried to make it sound convincing, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works in real life. Just sayin'.

Will’s just tossed in bed for the umpteenth time when his phone rings. Frowning, he reaches over and picks it off the dresser, squinting at the screen. There’s no number, international or otherwise – the screen simply states “Unknown”.

Will exhales slowly. It’s got to be Ethan; who else would call him from an unknown number at this time of night? The question is, why is Ethan calling him _now_ , just a couple or so hours after he’d informed him that the IMF didn’t exist anymore?

The phone keeps on ringing insistently, and with a wary glance at the screen, Will picks up.

“Hello? Brandt?” Ethan’s breathing is heavy, laborious, and instantly Will sits up in bed, alarm bells going off in his brain.

“Ethan?”

“Yeah. Is your line secure?”

Will takes the phone off his ear to make sure that the line is, in fact, secure, before returning it and saying, “Yeah. What is it?”

There’s a moment’s hesitation. Then, “I need your help.”

Will inhales sharply. “Okay. With what?”

“Last time I called you,” Ethan begins, and it sounds like he’s run a marathon; breathing hard and heavy, yet still managing to sound like he can’t get any oxygen in his lungs. “Last time I called you, that was a few hours ago,” he continues. “Where are you now?”

“Home, in bed,” Will replies. “Why?”

“I forgot to mention a tiny detail.”

It must be a pretty important detail, thinks Will, for Ethan to call him about it and thus put both of them at risk. “What?” he asks.

There’s a rush of breath over the phone as Ethan exhales. “I got shot,” he says, quickly, like he’s getting it over with.

“Oh.” Will’s fingers suddenly feel numb and shaky, even though getting shot is a thing that Ethan does all the time. There are betting pools in the office – _were_ betting pools, he absently corrects himself – and the person who guessed correctly the number of times Ethan got shot on a mission would receive all the winnings. Someone had even calculated an average (3.63 times per mission).

So why, now, does it feel like he can’t breathe either?

“Yeah,” Ethan says quietly. “Normally I can deal with it just fine on my own, but this one… it’s in deep. I tried probing with my fingers, can’t find it. Tried a tweezer. Nothing. I can’t stitch myself up if I don’t get the bullet out.”

Will forces himself to take a couple of deep breaths, and _think_. “Did… did it hit any major organs?” he asks, and his voice sounds strange even to his own ears.

“No, I don’t think so,” Ethan replies. “Just a flesh wound. Thing is, I can’t find the damn thing.” He sounds frustrated, like he’s been trying for hours.

“How am I supposed to help?” Will questions, through the slight throbbing that’s started in his head.

There’s a pause as Ethan figures it out. Clearly he didn’t think it through before calling Will. Will promptly points this out.

“Yeah,” Ethan replies, sounding a little embarrassed. “I just… needed to hear your voice, I guess.”

“You did, a few hours ago,” Will reminds him.

Ethan snorts. “That doesn’t count, you were giving me bad news.”

“It’s not like I got anything better for you right now.”

“Well, true, but you’re alone. So we can have a conversation without worrying about privacy.”

Will can’t help but roll his eyes fondly, even though no one can see. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, Ethan, where are you right now?”

“Squatting in an abandoned apartment complex in a country I can’t name,” Ethan tells him.

“You’ve probably got an infection already,” Will sighs.

“Thanks,” is Ethan’s sarcastic, slightly irritated answer.

“Did you disinfect the tweezers?”

“Do you honestly think this is the first time I’ve been in a situation like this, Will?”

“ _Did you disinfect the tweezers?”_

A sigh. “Yeah. Poured whiskey over it.”

“All right, s’pose that’s better than nothing,” mutters Will. “Okay. No exit wound, right?”

“Right,” confirms Ethan. “I don’t think I’d be alive right now if there was.”

Will’s heart lurches unexpectedly even though really, this is nothing new. “Where exactly is the wound?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Lower abdomen,” Ethan tells him.

“Did the bullet fragment?”

“Wasn’t that kind of bullet.”

“And didn’t hit an organ, so it’s a relatively shallow wound,” murmurs Will, talking more to himself than Ethan now, trying to figure it out. “Why can’t you find it?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan replies with an exasperated sigh. “It’s painful, though, I’ll tell you that.”

It hits Will suddenly. “How deep did you go?”

Ethan snorts, sounding _amused_ of all things. “That sounds dirty.”

Will sighs. “ _Ethan.”_

“An inch or so,” Ethan replies, still chortling slightly. “Wouldn’t go deeper,” he added, and then snorted again.

“You’re crazy,” muttered Will. “Okay, Ethan,” he said, a bit louder. “I want you to grab the tweezers, try again. Try to go deeper. You said it hurt, right? Well, that’s probably why you were unable to dig it out. Talk to me, I’ll help you get through.”

That’s all he _can_ do, he thinks bitterly, because Ethan is so far away and he’s hurt and alone and here Will is, in his cozy bed, wrapped in his warm comforter. He should be there with Ethan, dammit, he should be _helping_ him, fixing him up. Ethan shouldn’t be alone through this.

“Are you sure?” Ethan questions, breaking his line of thought. “It won’t make it worse?”

“I’m sure,” Will tells him, quietly but firmly. “Talk to me, okay?”

“Okay,” Ethan says, then takes a deep breath. Will can hear him over the phone as he mutters “all right” to himself, and then breathes in again. A moment later there’s a pained hiss, and Will winces. “I’m in,” Ethan tells him.

“How much?”

“Half an inch. Going deeper now.”

Will has to suppress a snort of his own; it _does_ sound dirty, he thinks hysterically. He wonders what’s making him lose his shit right now – if it’s the end of the IMF; or Ethan being an international fugitive, hurt and on his own; or Will’s complete inability to help him out at the moment. Probably a combination of the three.

He takes a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down, and then says, “Ethan?”

“I’m here.” Ethan sounds like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “Shit, this _hurts._ ”

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Will can’t help but say. “I should be there with you, Ethan.”

“Nothing you can do, Will,” Ethan reminds him, sounding pained. “You’re better off there, you’re safe.”

“I don’t _want_ —” Will begins, but then Ethan cuts him off with a strangled shout.

“ _Fuck!”_

“Ethan?” Will’s heart is racing now, as if he’s the one who’s been shot, and he can hear his blood pump through his ears. A shudder runs through his body when Ethan lets out another shout.

“I’m okay, I’m okay!” he says rapidly, breathing hard, and it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than Will. “It just hurts, that’s all. Nothing I haven’t had before, I’m okay,” he adds.

“Okay,” Will says, swallowing. “If you say so. You’re all right, you hear me? Just find it and get it out, so you can stitch yourself up and be done with it.”

“Easier said than done,” comes Ethan’s pained laugh. “One and a half inch, Brandt.”

“Nothing yet?”

“No.”

“Listen – did it go straight in, or did it go laterally?”

“What?”

“The path of the bullet, Ethan. Is it straight in?”

“No,” Ethan tells him. “Lateral.”

“And it’s not deep, right?”

“Right.”

Will closes his eyes, exhaling slowly through his mouth. “You’re not gonna like this.”

“What?” asks Ethan again. “Just say it, Brandt, just get it over with.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Will says. “Look, follow the path of the bullet with your fingers. Can you feel it? It’ll be a hard bump.”

“I think I’d have felt a bump under my skin,” Ethan says, sounding irritated again.

“Just do it, you stubborn ass,” sighs Will, bringing up a hand to massage his temples. His headache’s getting worse, and Ethan’s plight certainly isn’t helping.

“Fine,” grumbles Ethan. A moment later Will hears Ethan let out a pained sound through grit teeth.

“I assume you found it,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ethan says shortly. “Only it’s not as shallow as I’d thought. An inch in, at least. That’s why I hadn’t felt it earlier – I hadn’t been looking.”

“Okay,” says Will. “Stitch up the entry wound.”

“Will, what’re you—”

“Stitch it up, and then you’ll have to make another incision directly over the bullet,” Will says, speaking rapidly, as if saying it quickly will make it less painful. “Use the tweezers, dig it out, and close the wound.”

There’s a silence as Ethan digests this. Then he asks, “Are you _sure_ , Will?”

“Yes,” Will emphasizes.

A pause. Then, “Okay. I trust you.”

“Good to know,” jokes Will feebly.

“Talk to me,” Ethan says, his voice softer now, and Will knows that he’s no longer speaking to a fellow agent, a colleague. He’s speaking to his lover, the man he’s been with for just a little over eight months now. Now Ethan doesn’t want advice, he wants _reassurance_.

And hell if Will isn’t going to do everything in his power to give it to him.

“What do you want to hear?” he asks, his own voice just as soft.

“Anything,” Ethan replies.

“D’you want to hear about the first time I had to do this?” Will asks. “Find a bullet like this?”

There’s strained laughter over the phone. “Let’s leave that one for another time, maybe. Something else. Tell me something from before you joined IMF.”

Will feels a dull pang at the name, and the idea that the organization they’ve given so much to doesn’t exist anymore. Still, it’s not his priority right now – Ethan is. So he says, “All right. Okay. So when I was nineteen, in college, my roommate and I decided to, y’know, prank the guys in the room down the hall from us. They were assholes, y’know? Always blasting their music too loud, didn’t let anyone study, leaving food in their room until it went bad and stunk the entire place up… that kinda shit.”

Ethan’s breathing is getting heavier over the line, and Will imagines him slowly, laboriously suturing himself up, phone nearby on speaker. He swallows at the lump in his throat, reminding himself that the worst is yet to come.

“Go on,” says Ethan, voice trembling from the effort of keeping his pain in.

“Yeah,” replies Will thickly. He swallows again. “Well, it started out simple, you know, just shit like itching powder and mysteriously vanishing laundry…” He bites his lip when Ethan yells out, the sound muffled but just as painful to Will as if Ethan were next to him. “Ethan?”

“I’m okay,” Ethan reiterates. “I’m fine, babe, I’m okay. Go on.”

There’s something stinging at the back of Will’s eyes, but he obliges. “Yeah. So, er, y’know.” He stops again, unable to continue from where he’d left off, unable to listen to Ethan in pain. “Ethan…”

“It’s nothing,” Ethan says quietly, his voice strained. “Just… just made the incision. I’m going to look… for the bullet now. You go on talking, Will.”

“Okay, yeah,” Will says, closing his eyes, trying to steady his heartbeat. “Okay. So, y’know, it went on like that, harmless stuff at first. Couple months of guerilla warfare later, some assholes got together and painted dicks on everyone’s doors, got the whole dorm involved.”

“Dicks, huh?” Ethan mutters. “Mature.”

“Yeah,” says Will with a forced laugh. “You, uh, you got it? The bullet?”

“Yeah I did,” Ethan replies, exhaling slowly. “It’s out.”

Will lets out a sigh of relief, slumping forward and pressing his free hand over his wildly beating heart. “Thank God,” he breathes. “How’re you doing?”

“Just need to suture it up,” comes Ethan’s reply. “It doesn’t hurt so much now. You keep talking, okay, Brandt?”

Will chuckles weakly. “You need to make up your mind about what to call me,” he says.

“Sorry,” is Ethan’s sheepish answer. “I don’t really think about it, you know. I just go with whatever comes out of my mouth.”

“Choose one and stick with it, you confuse me sometimes,” Will tells him. He’s grinning, even though Ethan can’t see it over the phone – a tired, relieved grin.

“Sure,” Ethan replies with a snort. “Anyway, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

“Okay, now I know you’ve _really_ lost it,” declares Will, his grin slipping into a wistful smile. He _misses_ Ethan, misses being by his side and fixing him up when he gets hurt, having his back through whatever stupid shit they’ve gotten into this time. And it’s only been a couple days or so since he last saw him. He doesn’t want to think about what’ll happen when Ethan inevitably vanishes off the grid.

“Hey, don’t trash-talk Shakespeare,” jokes Ethan, but it sounds tired, like all he wants is to get into bed and stay there. Will knows the feeling all too well.

“Almost done,” he soothes. “Just a bit more, Ethan. You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Ethan agrees. “Hey, what happened with the dicks?”

Will utters a soft laugh, his own voice just as tired as Ethan’s. “I’ll tell you when I see you, okay?” he promises.

“Okay,” concedes Ethan. “And hey, Will? Thanks,” he adds quietly.

“Don’t be stupid,” says Will at once.

“No, I’m not,” Ethan protests. “Look, you got me through, okay? At great risk to yourself. You didn’t have to answer, you didn’t have to keep talking to me. But you did. So thank you.”

Will can’t help but smile. If only he _knew_ what Will is willing to do for him, what any of them are. It would be too much to express in words, though, and besides, Will isn’t sure he _can_. How can he explain feelings that run so deep, he can't imagine how he’d lived without them before? So in the end he just goes with something simple. “Any time, Ethan.”

“I miss you, you know,” Ethan tells him, and he sounds wistful too, and also like he knows every single thing that Will isn’t saying, and like he reciprocates it all thousandfold. “But I’m glad you’re safe.”

“It doesn’t mean shit if I can’t be with you and help,” Will points out, his heart feeling full. “Hell, I don’t even know when we can talk to each other again, after this.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath as the realization hits Ethan. He must have figured it before as well, but everything feels worse when you’re hurt and alone. “It’s for the best,” he finally says quietly.

“Are you scared?” asks Will, voice just as hushed, like this is something that should not be spoken of out loud.

“Who, me? No,” says Ethan confidently, and both of them know he’s lying. “You?”

“Not at all,” Will lies right back. “We got this.”

“We got this,” Ethan confirms. He’s not sure if this part is true or not.

“I don’t want to hang up,” Will admits to him a moment later.

“Me neither, but I’m dead on my feet,” Ethan answers regretfully. “Besides, I’ve got to be out of here soon. And I need to get rid of this phone.”

“How will I reach you, if I need to?” asks Will. He wants to know for personal reasons but also for practical ones – if the CIA is coming after Ethan, Will needs to find a way to keep him safe. It’s all he can do from where he is right now.

“Best you don’t,” Ethan tells him, sounding like he wishes there were any other alternative. “Look, Will, they’ll interrogate you, okay. Polygraphs and all. If you’re caught lying, you’re fucked. Tell them the truth, babe – that you don’t know where I am, I didn’t contact you, and you don’t know how to reach me. It’ll keep you safe.”

“I don’t like this,” Will states at once.

“Me neither, but we don’t have a choice,” supplies Ethan quietly. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“And I don’t want you to be completely alone,” Will counters.

“I won’t be,” Ethan reassures him. “You’re all looking out for me, aren’t you?”

“Always,” Will replies. “But there’s only so much I can do—”

“Hey,” interjects Ethan, tone soft. “It’s okay, Will. It’s more than enough. We got this, remember?”

It feels like Will’s throat is closing up again. “Yeah,” he says thickly. “We got this.” He wonders which one of them they’re both trying to convince.

“Give Benji my best, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“That’s _your_ job, isn’t it?” chuckles Will wetly.

There’s a short silence. Then Ethan says, “I got to go. I’m sorry. I want to talk, I really do, but—”

“No, I get it,” Will cuts across him. “You—you take care, okay?”

“You too,” Ethan replies. And then, so quietly that Will almost misses it, “I love you.”

He hangs up before Will can reply, and the analyst is left with forlorn beeping in lieu of Ethan’s warm voice. He deletes the call from his log and tosses his phone aside, settling back down in bed and resolutely ignoring the wetness in his eyes. “I love you too, you idiot,” he whispers out loud to no one.

Ethan’s going to be all right. He _has_ to be. And in the meanwhile? Will is going to do _everything_ in his power to fix this, to bring Ethan home.

They’ve got this.

**Author's Note:**

> FEEDBACK, CRYING, SCREAMING ABOUT THE MOVIE - ALL ARE WELCOME.
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr.](http://chesterbennington.co.vu/)
> 
>  
> 
> Love,  
> Remy x


End file.
